It's a crushing, depressing game that makes my head spin, but is pretty incredible with how they manage to make paperwork engaging and at the same time calling on you to make some moral decisions. Played the free Beta version and fell in love with it. Bought it on steam now.

Over the weekend I finally got around to watching Indie Game: The Movie and that got me to scrounge around in my games folder and actually start to play Fez. While my experience is somewhat tainted by what I learned about Phil Fish, I'm really enjoying the hell out of the game. Though I'm not seeing too much beyond "it's pretty" at the moment...

I've been doing full-on ADD gaming lately, bouncing from one thing to another without stopping. GTA 5 is still getting regular play-time, and the new Minecraft 1.7 update has been getting some attention as well after well over a year away from the game, but otherwise I've been buzzing back and forth looking for new.

Kromaia- public demo coming soon. Lovely free-fly and shoot in 3D space, vaguely Rez-ish.The Stanley Parable- so awesome! but also just a couple days to explore the various story threads.Luxuria Superbia- it's a game about flowers that's also a game about sex. Unity web demo at the link.Eldritch- randomized FPS with a Lovecraftian theme and vaguely Minecraft-y look.Beyond Perception- puzzle FPS, no shooting and no clever special-ability gun, but rather an art style that turns the levels into puzzles of perception.NeoColonialism- board-type game about plundering the wealth of the world.Secret of Raetikon- 2D flyer with a lovely angular art style, like a classic platformer without any platforms.

I've gotten articles out of all of them but Raetikon (which I just got today) so I suppose I can pretend I've been productive rather than flighty. :)

oldhat- Has Fez started opening up yet? It gets very puzzle-y as it goes, and eventually the platforming takes a back seat to solving every last thing you can find.

I snagged Teleglitch for a couple dollars a little while back and finally got to play it recently. It's a procedurally generated shooter with pixel graphics, but it's strangely compelling and sometimes kind of scary.

Like Mr. Cunningham, I'm delving back into Minecraft with the newest update and it's been fun. I love how easy it is to come back home to that game.

Since I recently started dating a mother of three Minecraft-obsessed boys, I've been playing more lately myself in preparation for showing them my world. Amazed at its ability to keep me playing it through the years. It's been... four and a bit years now. I've played this a lot more than I ever played World of Warcraft.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is now available on Steam and no one told me. I saw a little retrospective article in a Game Informer a while back, and cursed myself for not being old enough or cool enough to know about it when it came out.

And, w/ the Halloween sale going on now, its only $2.49.At least I get paid tomorrow...

Hmm, I was 20 then, looks like. I sort of remember being much more of a kid, but maybe I was just more childish than I remember. It made an impression but I don't remember finishing it, I seem to remember a ragequit of some variety because I got stuck.

Hey! I'm used to that feeling! For some reason, I get frustrated and confused w/ adventure games way more than any other genre. I have a feeling I will totally be consulting a walkthrough for this one.

Also, I downloaded the Stanley Parable Demonstration. Easily the best game demo I've ever seen. Other games make me laugh, but this was something else. It was DELIGHTED laughter.If I had $15 to spare, I'd be downloading the full game too.

I'm going to try resisting the walkthroughs just because I didn't have them with the Adventure games from that time. It took forever for me to beat Day of the Tentacle but it was SO rewarding when I finished that fucking game.

I didn't grow up w/ adventure games, so I don't think I had the opportunity to build patience to deal w/ the puzzles in them.

Not sure there's a whole conversation in the topic, but I find it interesting just how many different ways video games can be rewarding to different people. Puzzles don't do it for me, but I really like finishing stories.The Fallout games are really rewarding to me, because it doesn't feel impossible (except when I tried playing 1 and 2; turn-based combat is not my friend).

And, the simple pleasure of leaping and gliding across the entire map in Saints Row IV was ridiculously satisfying.

Oh no, you misunderstand. No patience about it. I STILL ragequit and leave a game for a few days before going back to it and trying again. :)

And I think that's a fantastic conversation to have, especially in getting to know one another more!

So...I'm REALLY digging FEZ. I play for a few minutes every day now just to get out of my head a bit. It's a really beautiful game and almost pure escapism for me. My dillemma is that I would like to buy a shirt (and hell, I probably will), but I'm not sure I want to give money to Phil Fish who becomes an even bigger dickhead the more I read about him. I don't really want to support a guy who makes racist remarks, physically threatens people and goes off on some wild rages.

Also kind of wish he stopped reading the comments back in 2009. I suspect he'd be a much...happier person.

I get the feeling those games are like that for everyone. I sadly never get to the "going back to it" part.Though I did quit IHNOaIMS three times already. I got a bad ending! That's a thing that's not completely quitting!

DotT is pretty darned great, and possible to do without a walkthrough. The only reason I needed one when I completed it a couple of years back was because I missed picking up a coat that was in the corner of some room somewhere.

When it comes to I Have No Mouth, however - and no spoilers here - I've read about the requirements for getting what passes for the "proper" ending, and they're so freaking obtuse that if you don't want to consult a guide, you'd need to be discussing the game in a forum somewhere, comparing experiences and listing exactly what they did, in order to suss out what needs to be done.

That said, I'm still very much about going into a game as blind as possible when it comes to plot and such. In some games, getting the "bad" ending is a huge part of the experience. I've played through "9 hours, 9 persons, 9 doors" for the DS a few times, and it's really interesting in that manner... You're basically asked to replay the game several times to get several different endings, leading up to the "real" ending. Though with that one, I'm tempted to just look up what the ending is by now... It's interesting to see how things change, but since the actual gameplay outside of story bits is point-n-click "escape the room" stuff, redoing sections is just going through increasingly annoying motions and fast-forwarding through dialogue you've already read.

To be fair, I Have No Mouth *is* a game based on an implacable hate-filled omnipotent computer that torments its captive humans 24/7 until death is the only escape. I would expect a big helping of frustration to be part of the experience....